Here are a couple pictures from the weekend trip. I like riding out in the country, always have. This route, however, is new to me but I suspect it will be a frequent run from now on. There are only a few mild hills - nothing that I had to get off the bike to walk, even with the heavy load. I do have a 4th smaller chain ring to gear way down. It seems to me I sized up the ring from what I originally had on there (I bought 2, I forget what tooth counts, but they were 2 different sizes - smallest they had and one a couple teeth bigger - Mountain Tamer Triple is what it is - adapts a cassette gear to a crank).
The biggest complaint I have is the rolling resistance of the tires. So I will work on possibly changing that. I am tempted to build a 20" wheel set, but if I did for the time being I would want to keep the stub axle set up for the time being. I will have to see if I can find some stub axles that allow tensioning (IE - threaded axle, not fixed cones or pinned/clipped in cones like these axles).
Other than the rolling resistance, it handled fine. I did take off a noticeable amount of tongue weight from my test ride earlier. I could still feel the tongue weight on pulling the bike to the left (off balance) but it wasn't as much as before.
I think I will experiment with the axle placement. I have plenty of useable length left in the set of poles I have at the moment where I can shift the tubs back about 10". What I want to try to do is minimize the amount of weight behind the axle. There really isn't much now, but I want to trim that down as far as I can. The reason being I think that mass is where the side-to-side jerky-ness of the trailer comes from. It isn't terrible, but from a day-after-day long tour perspective that would get irritating pretty fast. If I can minimize it more all the better.
There are about 3-4 miles of MUP trail on this route. The trail crosses many roads. I went over some of those crossings with a good bit of speed to see how the trailer handled. I noticed it bounced. I saw the wheels flop a bit out of the corner of my eye trying to look back. I will inspect the brackets that the stub axles go in to. I did spend some time to tune the alignment and ensure there was a snug fit to the stub axles last week. At that point the only noticeable play was in the bearings (again - can't tension them without a threaded axle). So I am curious if the flopping of the wheels was just the bearing or if the brackets opened up some over the miles.
Note the high mounted blinky tail light. I really like doing that. I have a mast I put together to hold up a ham radio antenna and have used that for the light as well. Riding on the roads out in the country it helps enormously when cresting hills. The higher the light is the more warning distance to motorists coming up over the same hill. This pole is just a pole. As with the rest of the trailer frame and the "platforms" for the tubs - everything right now is ratchet strapped together. I need a better solution for the pole. The biggest issue, aside from the time it takes to get the strap woven right to do it, is I can't get in to the tub on-the-go. The pole strap is the first that has to come off. and I can't put it on until I get the 2 holding the tub down secured. Some kind of mount attached to the frame rail is in order. That brings up another aspect that needs addressed in a custom trailer design.
Here is a closer-up picture.
